Customer Reviews

Trigger & Friends (The Complete Federation of the Hub, Vol. 3)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am delighted to welcome back these stories by James Schmitz featuring his wonderful character, Trigger Argee, and her friends. James Schmitz had the knack of creating futurescapes and characters which are deep, insightful, and riveting -- especially female characters. Trigger feels like a friend by the time an Argee story ends.

I had promised myself ONE STORY PER DAY, but I could not put this book down. This is the third of four collections featuring the stories of James Schmitz which are edited by Eric Flint -- this one co-edited with Guy Gordon. In this book you will find Trigger and Holati facing off the top eschelon of government. You'll find Quillan, well named "Bad News", getting some bad news of his own. You'll find Professor Mantelish giving one interview too many. All have the flow of a good story -- one that feels like reality and moves at a fast clip.

Fortunately, I can go back to my story-a-day promise. With this book and in these stories, there is always more to discover.

The first two volumes of the Hub series published by Baen Books presented the experiences of the teen-aged Telzey Amberdon. The other volumes gather together stories centered on other characters of the Hub civilization (including in one case an ecology!). Volume 3 presents the adventures of Trigger Argee, Pilch, and Hezlet Quillan, agents of the Hub Overgovernment. In these stories, we have some background filled in and begin to understand how the Hub culture deals with an unfriendly galaxy. Strongly recommended.

This third volume of the Hub Stories reveals more of Trigger Argee and those around her. Heslet Quillan is here. He's a sixties sort of wise-cracking secret agent gunman transported to the Hub Universe. He first appears in Lion Loose and tangles with a monster and two mobs of the Interstellar Underworld. The story is basically a gangster story but the monster is interesting, one of Schmitz's more interesting ones. Schmitz did good monsters. He reappears in Legacy, along with Trigger. Legacy is a complex story with interesting, unusual, and believable aliens. It also gets into the inner workings of the Federation and the lives of the people who live in it, work in it, and keep it going. An interesting look. The Hub was one of the more interesting backgrounds in Science Fiction, and it's fun to visit. A good Saturday afternoon read.

James Schmitz was a very popular science fiction writer in the 60s, but since has fallen off the map. Why? Because he didn't much write novels - he wrote short stories and novellas. I'm happy that Eric Flint worked to bring us the Hub series as a set of books, bringing together the short stories of Schmitz for the first time in years.

Trigger & Friends revolves around Trigger Argee (obviously). It is impossible to really devolve the plot into a review; suffice it to say that the short stories in this book are a great deal of fun - this is what science fiction should be all about!

In the afterword, Eric Flint has this to say :-

"James Schmitz's Hub tales revolve around a central core. Or, it might be better to say, a tandem axle'the adventures of Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. Those core stories, with two exceptions ("The Searcher" and "A Nice Day for Screaming"), have all been assembled in the first three volumes of this four-volume series."

and

"But the core stories involve more than just Telzey and Trigger. In addition, there are a number of secondary characters who frequently appear in Telzey and Trigger's adventures. Many of these "secondary" characters are quite prominent in their own right, and they are as much a part of the "core" as Telzey and Trigger. In fact, most of them get at least one story in which they are the protagonist rather than the spear-carrier."

One of the stories has apparently been 'De Camped', so that Planet of Forgetting is adapted into a Heslet Quillan story for this volume.

Anyway, some more good stuff in this book, whether Trigger features, supports, or other agents and superspies are shooting it out with bad guys.


Hub : Trigger and Friends 1 Harvest Time [Trigger Argee] - James H. Schmitz
Hub : Trigger and Friends 2 Lion Loose [Heslet Quillan] - James H. Schmitz
Hub : Trigger and Friends 3 Aura of Immortality [Trigger Argee] - James H. Schmitz
Hub : Trigger and Friends 4 Forget It [Heslet Quillan] - James H. Schmitz amd Guy Gordon
Hub : Trigger and Friends 5 Legacy [A Tale of Two Clocks] - James H. Schmitz
Hub : Trigger and Friends 6 Sour Note on Palayata - James H. Schmitz


Some cleaning up of some nogoodniks murderous types for Tate and Trigger.

3 out of 5


Heslet Quillan in the middle of guns and gangster, on an old space resort.

3.5 out of 5


Heslet Quillan in the middle of guns and gangster, on an old space resort.

3.5 out of 5


Amnesiac agent adventures, revisited.

3.5 out of 5


Old Galactic Gun Girl mission.


While not the precocious super bright type Telzey Amberdon is, this not-kid-either can handle a gun.

Again, a mission for a talent young woman with the skills to suit a mission with strange aliens, disguise, subterfuge, and more.

At stake could be interplanetary war, as the plasmoids are Repulsive.

The Hub is in good hands with the platinum blonde Space Agent babe on the case (with the odd bit of male help of varying use).

3 out of 5


Pilch investigates a planet whose locals seem humanlike, but their minds are rather strange.

3.5 out of 5




3.5 out of 5